Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. A former aide to Margaret Thatcher, Gardiner has served as a foreign policy adviser to two US presidential campaigns. He appears frequently on American and British television, including Fox News Channel, BBC, and Fox Business Network.

David Cameron needs to listen to the British people and hold a referendum on the EU

A comprehensive new YouGov-Cambridge survey on attitudes towards the European Union in seven EU member states (hat tip: Peter Hoskin, Coffee House) will add to the pressure on David Cameron to hold a referendum on Britain’s future in the European Union. According to the poll conducted in late February and early March, 60 percent of Britons surveyed agree that the UK “should hold a national referendum to decide its relationship with the EU,” including 37 per cent who strongly agree. In contrast, just 19 per cent disagree with holding a referendum, with a mere 7 per cent strongly disagreeing.

Strikingly, support for holding a referendum is high across the European Union, with 58 per cent of Frenchmen, 57 per cent of Germans and 48 per cent of Italians backing a popular vote on the issue. More than two thirds of Britons surveyed supported Britain having “an automatic right to leave the EU, if a majority of voting people say they want to do so.”

When asked how they would like to see the EU develop, just 14 per cent of British respondents said they would like to see Britain “staying as a full member and working for a more integrated Europe.” Forty per cent backed “a looser arrangement with the EU, based on maintaining trade and cooperation on some common policies, but opting out of EU-wide policies enforced by a European government in Brussels”, with 20 per cent supporting a complete withdrawal from the European Union. However, if Britain were to push for a new EU Treaty which returned more power to member states, a realistic scenario in the next few years, and such a treaty were vetoed by other European powers, 53 per cent of Britons would opt to leave the EU.

The YouGov-Cambridge poll showed strong opposition to Brussels usurping national powers in nearly all key areas, including on immigration (79 per cent), tax rates and national budgets (89 per cent), crime and justice (85 per cent), diplomatic relations with non-EU countries (60 per cent), the use of military force (69 per cent), and recovering from the recession and the financial crisis (74 per cent).

YouGov-Cambridge’s survey shows widespread disenchantment with the European Union across Europe, especially in Britain. When asked to use words and phrases that best describe what the EU meant to them personally, 56 per cent of Britons said “a lot of bureaucracy”, 28 per cent said “corruption”, and 19 percent said “dictatorship”. Just 10 per cent of British respondents used the word “democracy” to describe the EU, and a mere 6 per cent said the EU meant a “better quality of life”, a figure that was only slightly higher in France (8 per cent) and Germany (13 per cent).

Eighteen per cent of respondents included membership of the European Union as one of the three or four most urgent issues facing the country, which suggests that Europe will feature prominently in voter concerns at the 2015 election, a figure which is probably far higher among Conservative voters. This is a larger number than those who cited education (15 per cent), and house prices (8 per cent). Overall EU membership ranked seventh in terms of most urgent issue behind unemployment, cost of living, immigration, healthcare, pensions, and social security.

YouGov-Cambridge’s findings confirm that Britain is the most Eurosceptic major country in the EU, with deep-seated concerns over the direction the 27-nation bloc is taking. Six in ten Britons believe that the government should hold a referendum on membership of the EU, a significant majority of the country, whose voice on this crucial issue has been largely ignored by the Coalition. The pressure on Mr. Cameron to agree to a referendum is only likely to grow stronger as the Eurozone crisis worsens. The prime minister should show leadership on the matter and give the British people the final say on shaping their own destiny in Europe at a time of tremendous upheaval across the continent.